An eclipsing August

August was filled with family, school, cars, mother nature, and bars and beams...

Proclamation on the Family👪

Our Stake Presidency encouraged the members of the stake to "memorize" the Proclamation on the Family (I say "memorize" because it was later clarified that the Stake Presidency wanted us to memorize more of the doctrine and principles in the Proclamation).

So I took the Proclamation (which is 29 sentences long), and gave each of my young women 2-3 sentences each to memorize one night.  And I'm proud to say the girls rose to the occasion (leaders too) and memorized their parts.  Then, we recited the Proclamation in front of the young men.

Honestly, it was one of my favorite activities ever.


New School Year🎒

Hannah started another school year.

Nathan gave Hannah a father's blessing the night before school started.  It was very sweet, and it brought back great memories of my childhood.  It's nice to continue traditions (on both sides of the family) continue on.

And here she is on her first day of school!  She was so excited to wear this dress for her first day.  The only thing that made her sad was that her new shoes didn't arrive in time. 😞

Vehicles🚙

We had decided that we were going to put our Subaru on the market and get a different car.  When we came to that decision, the very next day the car overheated: cracked radiator.😠

It must have heard us talking about it, got its feelings hurt, and decided to get some revenge.  So we fixed the car and started to look for another one...

And we found one!  Let's just say it's a good "fit" for our family.

Gymnastics🏅

Hannah started gymnastics this month and she LOVES it!

This girl will not stop doing cartwheels.  In fact, I got a note from her teacher one day informing me that Hannah got a warning at school because "she was doing gymnastics in class."


Eclipse🌒

One of the up sides of living in the south was that we were just 3 hours away from the Path of Totality with the solar eclipse.  So, we traveled up and met up with Nathan's family.  It was AMAZING!  There are just a few times in my life where I have been in such awe with nature, and this was one of those events!

This is a picture my brother-in-law took with his camera and filter.

Hannah zonked out in the car.

Miscellaneous

Hannah was excited to wear one her new shirts.

One of Hannah's favorite Saturday morning activities: pancakes with Daddy.

Hot and humid weather in the South.

I had a nasty canker sore in my mouth.  To help me live through the pain I had to put some awful smelling medicine on it that stung for a bit.😕   But once it was on, then I was able to eat, talk, and function.

Sometimes Hannah can be rather sleepy in the mornings.  But not this morning!

When we were on our way back home from an outing we passed a rather large religious revival on the side of the road.  Got to love the south!

Muggy in July

Girls Camp🏕

I got to go to girls camp this year.  Being YW president you kind of have to.  I've now been to more girls camps as a leader than as a youth.  But this was my first "southern" girls camp.  What I mean by that is this was my first girls camp with hot, muggy, southern humid weather.  For the most part, it was nice.  Our cabins had AC (but we can't have the AC on during the day 😐).  I think that is a lame rule.  Usually with girls camp, I can rough it and shower in the middle of the week (I HATE the yucky, disgusting camp showers so I try and avoid those).  Ya.  Not here!  I had to shower every night because it was so muggy and hot.  In fact, EVERYONE showered daily here because of that.

Here's a pano of my cabin (I got there a day before the rest of my cabin arrived).  I strategically picked the bunk by the AC unit.  Ya.  I'm no dummy!

The girls in my cabin were so clean!  I loved them. 💕   They swept every day and night, and put all of their clothes, gifts, food, junk, etc. away!  I've never had a cabin like this at camp.  We got the "golden plunger" award for the being the cleanest cabin.

A few of the YW from the Lorna branch made this banner for our cabin.  They hung it outside, but when it started to rain they brought it inside to keep it from getting ruined.

I came in one night after my shower and I found the girls like this.💝😊

The first day of camp was on July 4th (ya...weird I know!).  One of my laurels brought over 250 sparklers for everyone.  It was fun.  Some of the sparklers were pretty cool too!  There were some that were red and green, so it looked like we were Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort dueling.

 Here are my girls during the Bishop time.  They LOVE him.

 The girls learned a few dances while at camp.

 One of my laurels turned 18 while at camp.  She's still around for one more year before she graduates from high school.  I have 4 laurels graduating this next year.  FOUR!  😔

I even got to climb the ropes course and do the zip line.

Last day of camp.  We are tired.  We are dirty.  We are so grungy.  We want our real beds.

I knew that within 20 minutes of being in the car the girls would just crash!😂 

Swimming🏊

One of the great things about a summer in Alabama is swimming.  It is SO NICE to go to the pool on a very hot and muggy day.  The pool is so refreshing and it feels so nice.

Hannah has grown gills this summer.  She swims a lot at a summer day camp (more on that below). Plus, she started swim lessons this month.  This girls LOVES to be in the water.

Another Lost Tooth

Hannah lost another tooth!  This would be her second one.

Organizing - home and work📋

I got to do a little bit of organizing this month.

I organized Hannah's room a little more.  There is very limited space in an apartment, so I decided to maximize on the space behind her bedroom door.  Voila!

Same scenario with her bathroom too.  She has a very tiny bathroom, and there isn't much room to store all of her things.  But there is a lot of empty vertical space behind that door!

These over the door organizers are not just for shoes folks.  There are thousands of things you can do with these organizers.

I also got to clean and organize some more at work.  Things simmer down a little bit in the summer here, so I maximized that time to clean out some rooms that were pretty messy.  Unfortunately, I didn't get to take a before shot (I don't think it was possible for me to get my camera in there for a full pano picture).

Here is the end result. In case you were wondering what that big white thing is in the picture (off to the left side), it's a petticoat.  This room is used for the "Belles."  They keep all of their stuff in there, including their large petticoats and Southern Antebellum dresses.

Miscellaneous

Nathan treated Hannah to ice cream after they dropped me off for Girls Camp (she was really sad when I left).  Apparently she got over it quickly.

I mentioned Hannah was in a summer camp at the beginning of the blog.  She's been in it for half the summer now, and this kid LOVES it!  When we come and pick her up, she often times doesn't want to come home.😏

They had a "carnival" themed day, and when I picked her up she had her face painted.

It can get pretty hot here in the South.🌞  Muggy hot!  Nathan will often say "air conditioning is the 8th wonder of the world."

By the way, note the time on this screenshot: It's 5:30 in the EVENING, and it's still 105 degrees!🔥

And this is often what happens to Nathan on Sundays when we come home from church:

Nathan just crashes and takes a nap.  Hannah almost never does, but this time, she ended up falling asleep.  Guess that purple mask did the trick.